U.S. Chief District Judge Mark Walker sent lawyers for U.S. Senator Bill Nelson and Secretary of State Ken Detzner home Wednesday night after more than five hours of testimony, signaling he might give voters whose ballots were thrown out over mismatched signatures three to four days to remedy the situation.

But Uzoma Nkwonta, the lead lawyer for Nelson and the Democratic Party, said that would not be enough time to notify voters that their ballots weren’t counted and prove to elections supervisors they are who they said they were.

“A lot of voters have no idea their ballots have been rejected,” Nkwonta said, urging Walker to consider extending the deadline for all votes to be tabulated by at least two weeks.

Walker seemed determined to see that voters not be disenfranchised, but he appeared less likely to count all the mail-in and provisional ballots that were rejected over mismatched signatures. Twice he told lawyers for Detzner that the public has the right to know how many votes were thrown out, in that it might go a long way to restore faith in democracy.

"It matters to the people of Florida they were provided accurate information instead of people running around talking about 50,000 or 25,000 votes," Walker said, directing his comments to Mohammed Jazil, one of Detzner's lawyers. "It would be nice to know what it really is."

Leon County Supervisor of Elections Mark Earley gave an hour of detailed testimony about how the canvassing board evaluates whether a signature is valid or not, adding that there is no mandatory training and no standardization from county to county.

Once, a forensic signature analyst gave a presentation to the supervisors of elections at their annual meeting. “If we followed their suggestions our rejection rate would be even higher,” Earley said.

State Division of Elections Director Maria Matthews testified earlier in the marathon hearing she was only to find 3,688 ballots discounted in 45 of the state's 67 counties.

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Leon County Supervisor of Elections Mark Earley testifies about how the county handles signature matching in a Tallahassee federal court hearing Wednesday in one of seven recount lawsuits with Judge Mark Walker presiding. Nathan Archer/Tallahassee Democrat

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"Look at this through the prism of a person who was disenfranchised," Walker said, starting a long soliloquy about voter suppression and civil rights. "My ancestors weren't held in chains. I am a man"

But he said he was well aware of the plight of blacks and women who had to fight for the right to vote ."And now you find your vote was thrown out?" Walker asked, suggesting that such a situation demanded a remedy.

Walker is busy juggling several lawsuits challenging the state's elections statutes, and showed his impatience frequently, asking if anybody else was sleeping in the courthouse. His actions seemed to show a desire to expedite the cases quickly.

"I'm being asked evaluate the election code in Florida one piece at time," he quipped at one point in the proceedings.

Earlier Wednesday, on a conference call for a different lawsuit brought by Nelson and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, he gave lawyers on the other side a deadline of Thursday morning to respond to the complaint.

Nelson and the DSCC alleged in that lawsuit rules dictating how ballots with undervotes or overvotes are accepted violate the U.S. Constitution.

One rule says voters must mark ballots for any and all races in the same manner — such as circling a name or filling in an oval — for them to be counted. Another rule allows voters who make a mistake on their ballot to fix the problem by writing so-called "magic words" like "not this" or "wrong" on the ballot. Ballots from voters who cross out names without using magic words aren't counted.

Walker told lawyers for the defendant, Detzner, and the National Republican Senatorial Committee that they'll have to submit responses to the lawsuit no later than 9 a.m. Thursday.

"I don't lightly place this burden on you," Walker said. "But the people of Florida need to get orders out of me as well as the parties sooner rather than later. There's a lot of reasons why time is of the essence."

Jazil of the law firm Hopping, Green & Sams, said he needed more time to file a response and asked for a Friday morning deadline. Walker, however, declined.

Hearings on the Florida election recount are being held at the federal courthouse in Tallahassee, Fla. Wednesday, Nov. 14, 2018. (Photo11: Tori Schneider/Tallahassee Democrat)

"I don't know how many lawyers are in Hopping, but you got a lot more lawyers to work with than I do," Walker said. "And while there are folks at the secretary's office that are having to review these, they're not having to review as many documents as I am. So I'm going to measure the burden on everybody against the burden that's been placed on me."

Walker said lawyers on either side will need time to challenge his order or seek a stay with the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals depending on how he rules.

"I have every reason to believe I will be spending the night at the courthouse," Walker said. "So everybody else is going to have to carry the same kind of load I am. And I apologize. I don't make light of any of this."

Bins filled with ballots are stacked at the Broward County Supervisor of Elections office as employees count ballots during a recount Wednesday, Nov. 14, 2018, in Lauderhill, Fla.(Photo11: Wilfredo Lee/AP)

Judge Walker is handling seven recount-related cases, four of them from Bill Nelson and the Democratic Party. Most challenge the constitutionality of statutes having to do with election deadlines for mail-in ballots, the way signatures are evaluated and overvotes are judged. At least one asks for the deadline for the manual recount to be extended.

In an earlier hearing on another case, the News Service of Florida reported that Walker said "I feel a little bit like Capt. Kirk in the episode where the Tribbles multiply."

Contact Jeff Burlew at jburlew@tallahassee.com or follow @JeffBurlew on Twitter.